Yesterday I was invited to a Facebook conversation on a wall of a friend's friend. It was supposed to be a discussion about a quote Douglas Wilson wrote about feminism.

"Feminism has two tenets:1. Men are jerks.2. Women should be more like them."- Douglas Wilson

It quickly became a patriarchal exercise in shaming and silencing of those who spoke for abuse victims. ​If that wasn't bad enough, people (who seemed to mostly live in Moscow, Idaho) began to post comments about rape that will send chills down your spine:

"​Feelings are the bedrock for morality, proven by sociologists and linguists. Wow, that's deep.

Can I then ask why every feminist is then carrying on as if rape is somehow objectively wrong and evil? If a stronger sack of cells feels like raping a weaker sack of cells for the emotional higher and pleasure then surely it's ok on this emotional feminist worldview whereupon feelings make right?"

"Getting raped does not give you carte blanche on truth. "Many feminists were raped." That tells me nothing about whether or not feminism is an effective principle, or a right one."

​"So every single feminist has been raped by someone who was never prosecuted!? Wow!

*the more you know*"

"It's men who think like you that make good rapists."​

(The following was written by a woman)

"But that's not why there should be a whole dogma umbrella of "freedom from the oppression of all men for all women" - because some have been raped by some men who have sometimes not been prosecuted, or some have been abused by some men in some mutual relationships... etc... some some some some. It sounds like you should be a part of a campaign against rape, not an ideology "for" women. We ARE all human - where is the mutual acceptance of men and man-culture?"

Then there were the general comments about women and feminism that are too numerous to mention, but here are some highlights:​

"True, but I think many "feminists" cry, "OPPRESSION!" when they have no idea what true oppression is like. Most Americans have never seen true oppression, and for that we should be very thankful.​"​"If feminists would spend more time in the kitchen making sandwiches (like they're supposed to) we wouldn't have to waste time answering their inane questions."

"​"Silencing technique". I would laugh if it were funny. Trust me, if I had techniques to make feminists be silent, I'd be employing them."

​All of this because some women (and a few men) pushed back and said what they thought about Wilson's tone-deaf comment.

The worrisome part is that people were actively defending men who rape women and they equated sexual violence with the angry words of women, but they considered the angry words of women to be worse than sexual violence. They thought that "the angry feminists" were making a lot of noise over nothing, for "good guys" don't rape women.

#NotAllMen

But some men do, and that's what the hashatag ignores. The men (and women) who don't want to talk about sexual violence allow the men who do rape women get away with it. The shaming and silencing is all we need to see that we have a problem on our hands.

#NotAllWomen

Not all women are raped, but some are, and we need to listen to the victims and not silence them.

Some men get it. After hours of more or less vitriolic discussion, one man re-wrote Wilson's comment:​

​1. Men are jerks.2. They should be more like women

It was all a bit of fun, but it should cause us to ask the question most don't, "Do we need feminism?"

Author

"Finding the truth is like looking for a needle in the haystack: it's easier if you use a magnet, but you need to know where to look or the magnet becomes useless. To find the truth we need to look for the "why" and not only at the "who," because the "why" explains the "who" in a way that the "who" cannot explain the "why." And when we find the truth, we find freedom." - Susanna Krizo